The Intrinsic Value Podcast · 2026-07-05 · 1h 4m
Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O'Malley take a deep dive into Auto1 Group (ETR: AG1), the Berlin-based used-car platform. What trips most investors up about Auto1 is that it's two different businesses in one - a capital-light merchant marketplace on one side, a capital-heavy consumer retail bet on the other - and the asset-heavy model that everyone points to as the risk is arguably the same thing that kept Auto1 alive while better-funded competitors went bankrupt. The market tends to fixate on the inventory sitting on Auto1's books and misses that the two halves of the business earn their returns in entirely different ways. Daniel and Shawn walk through how the thin margins on each car turn into something far more attractive once you account for how fast Auto1 cycles its inventory, and why none of it works without the funding structure underneath: a non-recourse ABS architecture that lets Auto1 carry enormous inventory without raising equity to match. That's the piece capital-light rivals skipped, and a large part of why they didn't survive.
TIVP081 (Video): Restoration Hardware (RH): Building a Luxury Empire From Scratch w/ Shawn O'Malley and Daniel Mahncke70 / 100
TIVP078 (Video): Copa Holdings (CPA): Is Buffett right about Airline Stocks? w/ Daniel Mahncke & Shawn O’Malley69 / 100
TIVP077 (Video): QXO (QXO): Can One of the World's Best Consolidators Strike Lightning Again? w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley69 / 100
TIVP076 (Video): Grab Holdings (GRAB): Why Uber Surrendered Southeast Asia w/ Daniel Mahncke & Shawn O’Malley73 / 100
TIVP079 (Video): American Tower (AMT): The Wide Moat Business Your Phone Can't Live Without w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley